Miesha Tate made the trek to Brazil this past week to rediscover her passion for fighting, get back to basics, and hit the reset button.

It’s been 229 days since Ronda Rousey walked the walk inside Nationwide Arena in downtown Columbus, Ohio, following weeks of talking the talk.

Then-champ Tate succumbed to the same fate as the former Olympic bronze-medal-winning judoka’s previous seven adversaries: defeat via first round armbar.

In the process, she lost her Strikeforce bantamweight title – and use of her left arm for an indefinite period of time after refusing to tap. Her post-fight, in-cage interview with Showtime commentator Mauro Ranallo said it all. She was visibly deflated, humiliated, humbled. All she could do was voice respect in the direction of Rousey.

The physical damage was evident. But what nobody knew at the time, including Tate, was the impending mental cost.

It was getting overly emotional with rhetoric leading up to the fight, the way it played out, and the physical toll. Collectively, it was a destructive concoction.

At one point, retirement crossed her mind.

“That was at probably my lowest point of lows,” Tate told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “But I had to tell myself that really I still have a lot of love for MMA and I don’t want to walk away from it.”

Her arm sustained hyperextension and some soft tissue damage around the elbow, but surgery was not required. Following about a month of rehabilitation she jumped right back into her next training camp to prepare for her Aug. 18 matchup with Julie Kedzie.

She changed her nickname from “Takedown” to “Cupcake” to take a more light-hearted approach, and attempted to turn the page. But as the days went by, she realized she didn’t have her usual drive. She had worked so hard to mend her body she had neglected the rest. Her fire was gone.

“I thought that when the fight came closer that it (the feeling) would go away,” Tate said. “I just kept telling myself, ‘Oh, when I get in the fight, I’m sure I’ll get hit and just wake up and it’ll be fine.'”

In one of MMA’s best fights of 2012, Tate was in full-on zombie mode as she attempted to will herself to victory over the very game Kedzie.

After Tate was hit with a series of damaging punches and kicks in the first round, she took Kedzie down and fended off multiple submission attempts before taking her back and threatening with a submission of her own in the second to turn the tables, then was nearly knocked out from a head kick in the third. When she hit the mat in the final stanza, she was greeted with some ground and pound from Kedzie but was able to instinctively push off the cage and roll for an armbar submission, which she would get nearly two minutes later after adjusting it multiple times.

“[My performance] was really lackadaisical and flat,” Tate said. “I felt sloppy on my feet. She hit me, and it didn’t bother me. And that’s not good. When you get hit, it should fire you up or make you want to do something. I was just like, ‘Uh, whatever.’

“I felt like I couldn’t get out of first gear. I’m really fortunate that I was able to win the fight still being in that state of mind. It was really weird, and I didn’t like it.”

Something had to give. And it started with slamming on the brakes.

Tate considered visiting a sports psychologist to help her work through her issues, but she ultimately decided she needed to search inward for answers.

“I know what I need to do, and it’s just a matter of doing that and giving myself the time I need to be Miesha for a little bit,” she said. “I think I’ve put MMA at such a high priority on my list that it burnt me out a little bit. Coming off such a devastating loss with Ronda, and being so emotional for that fight that I was too emotional (for), and then I went from way too emotional to hardly any emotion. It was a big sway.”

Her plan, though not chiseled in stone, is to return to fighting in August 2013, which would be roughly one year since the Kedzie fight.

“I think I just need some balance in my life, just a little normality, and just some time to be myself for a little while and enjoy baking and being girly,” Tate said. “Those are things I miss sometimes because I’m constantly in the gym, and I don’t get a chance to do my hair, do my makeup, do things you take for granted. I’m constantly just a sweaty bun mess. You feel like you’re one of the guys all the time, and sometimes you feel like you kind of lose yourself in it.”

Only on occasion has she been in the gym since her fight with Kedzie, and most of the training has been technique-based only.

She’s found other avenues to enjoy the sport since her hiatus began, both in the commentating booth for the regional promotion CageSport and by simply being a fan at events such as the recent installment of Invicta FC.

Tate is hopeful spending six weeks in Rio de Janeiro will be the final step of the healing process. There she will train with Sylvio Behring at X-Gym, where the focus will be on grappling and gi training with an emphasis on technique and fundamentals. Tate is a purple belt in jiu-jitsu under Behring.

It’s not often fighters have the luxury to step back from their normal cycle to work on fine-tuning their skill set, and Tate plans to take full advantage of her time spent south of the equator.

We have not seen the last of Miesha Tate. At 26 years old, she still has a lot she wants to accomplish, including avenging previous losses to Kaitlin Young, Sarah Kaufman, and of course, Rousey.

“I feel like Ronda won the battle, but she hasn’t won the war,” Tate said. “I’m going to fight her again. I’m going to bring everything I have because I still want to go for my belt again.”

Refined, refreshed and back to normal is what she expects to feel when she returns to her home state of Washington after a few weeks off the grid.

“Sometimes I think it’s nice to miss something,” Tate said. “Sometimes you love something so much, but then you do it so often. … It’s kind of like your favorite song when it first comes out on the radio. They play it all the time, and you just love it that they play it every five minutes. And then pretty soon it’s like, ‘OK, I’m getting a little tired of this song.’ And then if they stop playing it and you hear it every once in a while you really appreciate it. That’s where I kind of think I’m at with MMA.”

Derek Bolender is a frequent contributor to MMAjunkie.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MMAjunkieDerek.